In the history of the cinema medium, there are a lot of A-list stars whose careers have faltered or completely diminished as a result of the downfall of their public personas away from the camera.
In a lot of cases it’s at their own demise. Johnny Depp was one of the biggest movie stars in the world until recently when his public life seemed to overtake the craft because he became apathetic, for example it was reported that he needs to have his lines fed to him through an earpiece every time he goes on set.
But other times it can be trouble with the legal system or something crazy that they said. And that certainly was the case with Liam Neeson before his latest movie hit theaters.
A-list stars have a tendency of sabotaging their own careers. Usually, superstardom has a way of evading consequence but occasionally it will hold these multimillionaires accountable for their actions. That’s a good thing.
Irish A-list superstar, Liam Neeson, was the most recent actor that fell unto the guillotine with an outrageous racist statement that he made recently.
The Academy award nominated actor for Schindler’s List found it in himself to be incredibly racist towards black people with a story that dates back 30 years.
Neeson claimed that he learned from a friend that she had been raped and when he probed about what nationality that person whom raped her was, she confirmed that he was black.
That’s when Neeson admitted during a press junket for his new movie Cold Pursuit that he went to a bar in an area where black people hung out and waited for some poor “Black bastard” to get aggressive with him on the street so that he could literally kill him.
His comments were met with immense backlash and some liberals even threatened to boycott the upcoming summer blockbuster Men In Black International.
But his latest film, Cold Pursuit, which hit theaters this past weekend, was the third most popular film in US and Canadian cinemas, but it only made $10.8m. For a Liam Neeson movie, those weekend results are grossly underperforming.
It’s important to keep in mind too that this was a highly rated reviewed movie from audience scores on rotten tomatoes, and even among the film critics it’s still garnered a 73%n positive score, which is really good.
What this means is that Liam Neeson’s career might effectively be over. Every single A-list star goes through ups and downs of this magnitude but this is definitely different – for at least a while.
Controversy like this happens all the time in the Hollywood community and they protect their own, but they are usually put in timeout for period of time after they say something to the magnitude of what Neeson said.
Mel Gibson is the perfect example of this. After those leaked voicemails of his racist rants to his ex-wife, Gibson was excommunicated from the industry for about seven years.
The difference though is that Mel Gibson is a talented director and Liam Neeson is not.
His career might not be forever terminal but it is for now.